This is going to be a quick one, but earlier today, someone asked a quick science question and I provided an accurate answer. They didn’t like it much.
The question was, “if suddenly, all time stopped, but you were the only thing unaffected, what would happen?”
It just wouldn’t go well for you.
That’s simply the reality of it. If time stopped for everything but you, you would suffocate. Air molecules couldn’t move into your lungs and you’d just go hypoxic. If you could somehow avoid that, then you’d starve. You couldn’t move food to your mouth because motion requires time. Even if you could get it into your mouth, you couldn’t digest it. Digestion requires change, which is impossible without time. Life would be short and cruel for you.
Of course, lots of people got upset. “I’m sure that’s not what he meant!” Then maybe he should have been more specific. Ask the question that you want an answer to. If you’re not concerned with accuracy, then why ask at all?
This kind of thing happens all the time these days, doesn’t it? People who don’t put a lot of thought into things and then, when they don’t get the answer that they wanted back, they get upset. Sorry, did you want me to lie to you? That is what would actually happen if this bizarre hypothetical were to actually come to pass. Physics works like physics works. Take that information and either deal with it or modify your question to something else.
Someone suggested that maybe, he intended it as a field around the body, where things suddenly regained “time”. Great! Ask that! We can only go by what you actually say, not by what you think that you meant. Come back with a better formulation.
Yet isn’t that what we see from the religious all the time these days? They will ask questions that are totally incoherent and absurdly nonsensical and when we point it out, especially when we explain why they’ve gone so wrong, they get upset because, I guess, in their heads it sounded a whole lot better. This is the religious, lacking the basic knowledge required to make sense. Learn something and come back with a better formulation.
The sad fact is, they don’t like that. They want to think they had it right all along and when it’s pointed out to them that they don’t, they kick and scream and throw childish temper tantrums rather than just admit their failure and figuring out how to be better. These people don’t want to be rational. They just want to be happy and being happy, while being absurdly wrong about everything you believe, that isn’t a good look.
It’s pathetic just how dumb a large part of humanity is. I weep for our future.
. . .if time stops, I would think you’re finished. The speed of light also becomes zero, i.e. no time, no light. Hence your surroundings become total pitch dark. Stopped at the atomic level. Everything will be still. OK, so you can move. Big deal! The air around you will still be there. So, maybe you can suck it in? But the air won’t move, if you breathe at a given small space voids of air created become small pockets like a vacuum. So -maybe- you would have to move every time you have to breathe? And it’s still pitch dark around you? Your just finished regardless of specifics.
re:”It’s pathetic just how dumb a large part of humanity is. ” . . . .yeah but ya’ got to flow a bit with it or you will possibly be engulfed by a stress-related illness. You know people are going to continue to be really dumb.
Joshua 10:12-15 “The sun stopped in the sky in Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Aijalon.” Ancient Jewish and Christian scholars interpreted it literally; they also argued that the purpose of the miracle was to allow the Israelites more daytime to defeat their enemies. . . .ha, ha, ha, ha. . . .Look at what you’re up against!
This also puts the kibosh on their god being outside of time. Without time, nothing happens so their god can’t create the universe. They also struggle to answer the question from what, exactly, did their god make everything in the universe if before creation there was, er, nothing?
Theism is not for the thinking classes.
I agree. Theism is for the overly-emotional, not the rational or critical. Most people are just dumb, even the non-religious. It’s why the tagline for my channel is “exposing stupidity wherever it hides”. It’s hiding all over the place. We need to stop coddling people’s feelings and start being honest.